Visited: July 2024
Nearby city: New York City, NY
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
"The New Colossus"
Emma Lazarus
Lady Liberty, the Mother of Exiles, Lady of the Harbor, the Green Goddess...the Statue of Liberty is one of the most iconic landmarks in the country. A triumphant, elegant, and beautiful sculpture that personifies freedom, opportunity, and democracy. A symbol of the promise of liberty and justice for all.
We visited the Statue of Liberty for the first time on Independence Day 2024. Statue of Liberty National Monument is managed by the NPS and covers two islands in New York Harbor: (1) Liberty Island (home of the statue itself and the Statue of Liberty museum); and (2) Ellis Island - home of the primary inspection and processing station of immigrants to the US from 1892 to 1954.
This blog post will focus on our visit to the Statue. A subsequent blog post will focus on Ellis Island.
You can visit the statue via a ferry from either: (1) Battery Park in downtown New York City; or (2) Liberty Park in New Jersey. Make sure to purchase your tickets from Statue City Cruises, the ONLY vendor authorized to provide tickets to travel to either Liberty or Ellis Island.
There are a number of ticket options: (1) general admission - this includes round-trip ferry service, audio tour, access to the museum, and the grounds of Liberty Island and base of the statue. If you so desire, you can pay more to access the (2) upper pedestal; or (3) the crown at the top of the statue. (access to the crown is limited so you need to book quite a bit in advance).
All options include admission to the Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island. Additionally, you can also pay extra for the Hard Hat Tour of Ellis Island.
If all you wish to do is see the Statue of Liberty from a boat, one option is to take the free Staten Island Ferry, which runs between Manhattan and Staten Island. The trip offers great views of the statue, the harbor, and the NYC skyline.
We bought pedestal tickets for the first ferry of the day: 9:00 a.m.
It was a great ride out to Liberty Island.
One World Trade Center and the Lower Manhattan skyline
Shortly after the US Civil War ended, the French historian and abolitionist, Edouard de Laboulaye, proposed that a monument be built to commemorate the end of slavery and the upcoming centennial of US independence (1876). Laboulaye proposed that the French would gift the statue to the US, and the US would provide a site and build a pedestal for the statue.
French sculptor and painter Frederic Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue and Gustave Eiffel built the metal framework (Eiffel would, of course, go on to design and build the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889). Bartholdi modeled the statue on both Libertas, the ancient Roman goddess of liberty, and Lady Columbia, the female national personification of the United States. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed. These pieces were publicly displayed at numerous world's fairs and expositions in order to generate publicity and donations for the project.
The project was officially named La Liberte eclairant le monde ("Liberty Enligthening the World"). However, after its dedication, it quickly became known simply as "the Statue of Liberty."
the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects Brooklyn to Staten Island
President Rutherford B. Hayes designated Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) as the site for the statue. Bartholdi was delighted by the news. He felt that Bedloe's Island, a small island passed by any boat entering New York Harbor from the Atlantic Ocean, was an ideal location for the monument. The island had been ceded by the state of New York to the federal government in 1800. The federal government constructed a military fort on the island, Fort Wood, in 1806. The Fort protected the city of New York from the British during the War of 1812. When the island was selected as the site for the statue, the fort had long been out of use. The 11-point star layout of the fort serves as the base for the pedestal/statue. Bedloe's Island was officially renamed Liberty Island by act of Congress in 1956.
New York dignitaries and politicians organized an "American Committee" to raise money for the construction of the pedestal. They asked poet Emma Lazarus to compose an original work as part of the campaign. Lazarus was reluctant at first, primarily because at the time she was very busy, aiding Jewish refugees establish themselves in the city after fleeing pogroms in Russia/Eastern Europe. Eventually, she agreed to the request. She felt that a poem about the statue was a good way to express empathy for the plight of these refugees. In 1883, she wrote the sonnet "The New Colossus", portraying the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of hope for the oppressed and downtrodden masses seeking a new life in America; contrasting it to the "old" Colossus, the imposing statue of ancient times, that the Greeks had built to showcase their military prowess and instill fear in their rivals.
Tragically, a few years after the statue's dedication, upon returning home to New York after a goodwill mission to Europe, Lazarus became seriously ill (most likely Hodgkin's lymphoma). She passed away two months later, November 19, 1887, at the age of 38. Her poem was inscribed on a bronze plaque and installed on the statue's pedestal in 1903.
the original blonze plaque of "the New Colossus" is now on display in the museum
As construction of the statue neared completion in France, funding for the pedestal began to dry up. In an effort to raise money, Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the newspaper The New York World, pledged to print the name of every contributor in his paper, no matter how small the donation. This motivated many people to contribute, and over $100,000 (equivalent to $3.5 million in 2025) was raised to complete the pedestal. Eighty percent of that total was received in sums of one dollar or less. The pedestal was designed and built by the prominent American architect, Richard Morris Hunt.
The statue is made of copper sheets, only about 2.5 millimeters thick (equivalent to the width of two pennies stacked on top of each other). The statue is mostly hollow on the inside, and is supported by Eiffel's interior metal framework, made of iron and steel.
When first built, the statue had a reddish-brown color (as seen above on the model of the foot Tara is sitting on), and was shiny. However, by 1906, the copper skin had developed a greenish film known as a patina (it's current coloring) as the copper oxidized with the air and sea water. The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina to ascertain if it was damaging the statue. To their surprise, they discovered that the layer of patina actually protected the copper skin from further corrosion. Additionally, many felt that the new color rendered the statue more beautiful and aesthetically pleasing.
The Statue's original torch (used from 1886-1984) is now on display in the museum. The copper torch is covered with 24-karat gold leaf. During the daytime, sunlight reflects off the gold leaf of the torch. Since December 1916, the statue is illuminated at night via floodlights.
full-scale replica of the statue's face
The statue (and its interior framework) was completed in France in 1884. As the pedestal neared completion, the statue was disassembled into 350 individual parts, packed into crates, and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. The crates arrived in New York City on June 17, 1885. The pedestal was finally completed in April 1886. Shortly thereafter, assembly began. Eiffel's metal framework was anchored to the pedestal. Then, sections of the copper skin was carefully attached, piece by piece, to the framework.
After a large parade in the city attended by several hundred thousand people (as the parade passed by the New York Stock Exchange, ticker-tape was thrown in celebration, thus starting the tradition of "ticker-tape parades"), the Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland presided at the ceremony.
The full structure is 305-ft tall (the statue itself is 151-ft tall). At the time of completion, the Statue of Liberty was the tallest structure in the state of New York. The metal framework is strong, but flexible, and allows the statue to sway up to 3 inches (and the torch up to 6 inches) in the wind. The statue's right arm is extended high above her head, holding the torch. In her left hand she holds a tablet that reads "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (the date of Independence, July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals). Her crown is made up of 25 windows and 7 rays. The statue is striding forward over a broken chain (representing the end of slavery). However, the chain is mostly hidden by her robes, and is very difficult to see from the ground. The statue is in a contrapposto pose (standing with most of its weight on one foot), with her left foot striding forward, and her right foot raised and set back. This pose makes the statue appear "stationary" when viewed from the front, but the "striding" stance is much more prominent and dynamic when viewed from the side or back.
Eiffel's metal framework included a double-helix staircase to allow visitors to climb up to the crown. Initially, visitors could also continue to ascend a narrow 40-ft ladder all the way up to the torch. However, on July 30, 1916, during World War I, German saboteurs set off an explosion of over 2 million pounds of small arms and artillery ammunition, bound for the Allied powers in Europe, on a pier in Jersey City close to Liberty Island. This incident (known as the "Black Tom explosion") damaged the Statue (mostly to the torch bearing arm) and the Statue closed for ten days to make repairs. When the Statue re-opened, the access to the torch remained closed for safety reasons and it has never been re-opened to the public since.
It's a small world, we randomly bumped into Tara's friend from college! 😄
heading up to the pedestal
found a National Park entrance sign! ... kind of ... close enough.
looking out over the harbor from the pedestal
Ellis Island in the foreground
Manhattan on the left, Brooklyn on the right
The construction of the Statue of Liberty was not without controversy. Shortly after the dedication, a progressive African-American owned newspaper in Ohio, the Cleveland Gazette, published an essay entitled "Postpoing Bartholdi's statue until there is liberty for colored as well." The article included a scathing (yet poignant) criticism of the irony and hypocrisy of the project.
"Liberty enlightening the world, indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the "liberty" of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of "liberty" of this country "enlightening" the world, or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme."
November 27, 1886
During large-scale emigration to the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Statue's association with immigration became very strong, particularly after the opening of the processing center on nearby Ellis Island in 1892.
For millions and millions immigrants that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the Statue was their first sight of America. Many saw it as a sign of welcome to their new home. One Greek immigrant recounted his experience as follows:
"I saw the Statue of Liberty. And I said to myself, 'Lady, you're such a beautiful! You opened your arms and you get all the foreigners here. Give me a chance to prove that I am worth it, to do something, to be someone in America.' And always that statue was on my mind."
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After its dedication, the Statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board. However, plans for the statue to function as a lighthouse proved to be ineffective and were quickly abandoned. The administration of the statue was then transfered to the War Department in 1901. In 1924, Pres. Calvin Coolidge designated the statue as a National Monument, and it has been managed and administered by the National Park Service since 1933.
We enjoyed our visit to the Statue of Liberty, and I am glad to have finally had an opportunity to visit this iconic, must-see landmark.
It is a beautiful monument to the concepts of liberty, freedom, democracy, and equality. Has our country always lived up to these ideals? Certainly not. But, like the statue itself, we must strive, ever forward, to achieve the promise of liberty and justice for all. All races, all ethnicities, all sexes, all genders, all orientations, all religions, and all national origins. There may be setbacks and there may be storms, yet, through the generations, Lady Liberty holds her lit torch high above the din and haze, a beacon of hope that we must follow. And that is what the Statue of Liberty means to me.
For more info on the monument: https://www.nps.gov/stli/index.htm
